When did evolution become untouchable for debate?

William Murchison
07:43 PM CST
February 4, 2005

Horrifying. The idea, I mean, that attempts are afoot to -- wait, you'd better sit down for this one -- smuggle a non-Darwinian view of creation into the public schools.

Around and around, for 1,400-plus words, The New York Times' editorial writers anxiously pace, warning of 'crafty attacks on evolution' couched in 'softer, more roundabout' terms than those employed by long-forgotten anthropoids in their flagellation of John Thomas Scopes.

Today, in one Georgia county, The Times notes astringently, many want to affix to biology textbooks an advisory notice; to wit, that 'Evolution is a theory, not a fact' -- one to be approached in an inquiring spirit.

Meanwhile a Pennsylvania school board wants to introduce into the science curriculum the study of 'intelligent design' -- 'the notion,' as The Times explains it, 'that some things in nature, such as the workings of the cell and intricate organs like the eye, are so complex' they must be the work of a 'higher intelligence.'

The nerve, the nerve!

Anyway, be assured that The Times' ever-vigilant editorial staff is watching. Likewise the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, whose zoology department has undertaken the disciplining of a staff member who allowed a peer-reviewed article on intelligent design to be published in the museum's Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. The errant staff member, who holds two Ph.D. degrees in biology, has been called on the carpet and stripped of research space.

Naturally the Georgia and Pennsylvania gambits are under legal assault and may not survive.

Modern American high-schoolers may not learn as much as their parents did. One thing they learn with minimal exertion: Darwinian evolution is untouchable doctrine. It is, as The Times helpfully explains, "the most well-grounded theory in modern biology." As well-grounded, perchance, as theories that located the Earth at the center of the solar system, until ...

Yes, until. Science formerly had a habit of subjecting even the smoothest theories to challenge. Why the exemption for evolution? Or need we ask?

Attempts to deny intelligent design a serious hearing (as in the Smithsonian case) are the flip side of efforts to expunge from public life most, if not all, recognition of religion: even unto squeezing out of normal use at Christmas time the actual mention of "Christmas." Nativity scenes, prayers at commencements, display of the Ten Commandments on public property, conscientious study of scientific objections to Darwinism – uh-uh. No way.

The fly in the ointment, of course, is G-O-D – a supernatural being formerly rumored to have some connection with creation. As well as with human ends and means.

Intelligent design, though in no sense a religious theory – ask the design scientists if you don't believe me – can be connected to the Summa Theologica, where Aquinas posits (along with much else) that "There are design and government in the world. Hence there are ultimately a first designer and first governor [who] is the first and absolute intelligence." Mr. Darwin, meet Yaweh!

You'd rather not? Very modern, I must say. Modern secularism tolerates the God of the Bible and the Creeds as, at best, an Alternative Viewpoint. Though not a viewpoint worth much scientific attention.

A profound irony of The Times' perspective on evolution science is the specious claim that intelligent design doesn't rise to the level of science. How could it, there being "no body of research to support its claims..."? Why, no, indeed – no larger body than supported, say, the initial claims of Charles Darwin; except that, after Darwin, scientific materialism crowded supernaturalism off the stage and now reigns supreme. Or thinks it should.

Darwinian fascism and bigotry aren't fun to observe: least of all the snooty attempts to close off inquiry, to brush aside legitimate objections to the Darwinian account of origins. Twenty-first century science, it turns out, isn't about investigating and learning. It's about affirming. And, at appropriate moments, keeping your mouth shut, your mind closed securely.

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